Dylan Thomas: Final Version

I am going to analyse two poems by Dylan Thomas and I am going to talk about one topic that the author treated in his poetry: death. These two poems are: And Death Shall Have No Dominion from the volume 25 Poems ( 1936) and Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night from the volume Country Sleep ( 1952).                                                                             ( http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/Dylan_Thomas).

         The first poem is divided into three paragraphs of nine verses each one. These three paragraphs start and end with the same verse, that is the title of the poem too: And death shall have no dominion. We have an important repetition that makes the poem easier to remember, because it plays with the musicality, as if it were the chorus of a song. It has free rhyme. The second poem is divided into five paragraphs of three verses each one plus a sixth paragraph of four verses that ends the poem. Another time the author plays with the musicality that provokes the repetition of a verse, in this poem the repetition of two different verses; the first one is the verse: Do not go gentle into that good nigh, that is also the title of the poem. It appears in lines: 1, 6, 12, and 18. It starts paragraph 1 and it ends paragraphs 2, 4 and 6. And the second one is: Rage, rage against the dying of the light. It appears in verses: 3, 9, 15 and 19 and it ends paragraphs 1, 3, 5 and 6. These two verses have a rhyme and they use two similar words to end the verse: night and light, it only changes the first letter of the word: N ß à L. The rhyme is A- B- A/ A- B-A/ A- B-A/ A-B- A/ A- B- A/ A- B- A- A. The second poem is easier to remember than the first one, because it uses more repetitions and a more elaborate rhyme.

         Both poems talk about death, the poet is waiting for the end of  life, and he says that death is not welcomed. In the first poem the poet talks about the decomposition of men and all nature, when the sun will not shine again, in other words the poet compares death with the end of the world, and he says that although life went to the end, death will not have dominion, it means, death will not be important, death will not reign the world. In the second poem, the poet talks about the end of human life, comparing it with the end of the day, and again in this poem, Dylan Thomas says that death is not welcomed, he says “ do not go gentle into that good night”, it means, that death is obvious but we must not wait for it with happiness, you must be furious. I think that the most remarkable thing in the two poems is when in Do not go gentle into that good night, at the end of the poem, the poet addresses directly his father, I think this is because the poet is seeing death very near to him, and he wants his father to wait for him, I think the poet hopes for the blessing of his father.

         In And death shall have no dominion I think that the poet comes closer to Romanticism, and I think that because the description the poet makes about nature. He talks about men, wind, moon, stars, the sea and love ( in paragraph 1); about injuries and pain in the second paragraph; and birds, waves, flowers, rain, about madness and corpses in the third paragraph… and all these things are topics in the Romanticism. I think that in this poem Thomas shows he is scared of death, and he feels himself more secure if he takes off importance to death. He is superior to death and because of that it will not have dominion.

         I heard Do not go gentle into that good night in the Poetry class, and the impression I had, was that the poet was very unhappy and that the poem could be a song. The poet’s voice sounded as the voice of a person that has no hopes and he/ she is waiting for the end of their life. It is a very nice poem to read but it is nicer to listen how the poet reads it. When the poem arrives at the end, it seems that the poet is crying. In this poem I think that it also appears as a Romantic topic, the fatality of the end of  life, compared with the end of the day, and as in the other poem, the poet is against death, in this poem he is raged about the end of  life. It seems that the poet tells us to fight against death, he says “ do not go gentle”.

         In conclusion I think that the poet is afraid of death, and he puts himself in a high level to rest importance to death, it is like a shield because he is really scared, and we can see that when the poet reads the second poem. When I have looked for information about the poet, I have found that he died because of his alcoholism, and I think that he started drinking because he did not like the life he was living and he wanted to escape from real world, but at the same time he did not want to die, probably because we do not know where we will go after death. And I think that the feelings of the author, his fear to die, was normal at the time he lived, because he lived during the Second World War, and during wars the only thing people can wait for is death, religious people have the hope God will save them, but Dylan Thomas tells us in his poems that he lost his faith.